Hollanders, Friezen of Vlamingen?

Around 1520, a group of settlers from the Low Countries arrived on the Danish island of Amager and quickly became one of the most successful agricultural communities in the country. Since the nineteenth century, the exact origin of these settlers has been the object of scholarly dispute with two positions: one that the settlers originated from Flanders and the other that they originated from Holland. This article outlines arguments for both positions. It then attempts to resolve the dispute by conducting a morphological and lexical analysis of the names of the first settlers. This analysis provides onomastic evidence that excludes the possibility that the settlers originated from Flanders and demonstrates that they most likely originated from the Holland region of West Frisia. This evidence thus supports the hypothesis, based on information in a sixteenth-century Hoorn city chronical, that the settlers originated from the municipality of Hoorn in West Frisia.